Rachel Burgos is an herbalist currently living in the santa monica mountains of topanga, california, occupied chumash & tongva land. She dedicates her clinical work to provide preventative health care and education using plant, stone, animal & earth medicines in a holistic way. This encompasses but not limited to focusing on the patterns of imbalance we create through various traumas, ancestral patterning for both chronic and acute, emotional, physical or spiritual imbalances. Her work is centered in social justice, activism, and healing for not only humans but the greater ecology.

 

More info at

snakerootapothecary.com & @snakerootapothecary

“Energetically, emotionally, spiritually, I’ve been working on doing all the deep work I need to do to get into my heart so that I’m doing everything from that place instead of from the other human places that we operate from. It’s really, really hard to do. I would like to operate more from that place instead of the disconnected, Millennial, net-based and capitalistic go-go-go, must produce place and be more centered in my heart. Operating in a slower way. I feel like I’m doing those things. I’m doing my work, I’m taking tons of rose things and gold essence. Right now it’s really helping me get in there. I’m letting myself be vulnerable and I’m working really hard on my dreams and my life’s work. Which I’m assuming is herbalism."

“I was moving to New York City to start my art career… but somehow ended up in Big Sur. I was living alone on a mountain caretaking for this man who was gone all the time, milking his goats because I knew how to milk goats. And all of a sudden, I had all this time to myself, alone, on this isolated mountain. No cell phone service, no internet, no phone, nothing at all. There was no way for me to contact anybody. I was just with the goats and I would have to walk them six hours a day in the mountains. I basically lived outside in a yurt completely off the land. And I just started communicating with plants. You don’t even need to ingest plants to receive their medicine. I think anytime you spend time with plants, even in a city sidewalk, you receive their medicine. But that was the first time I really saw it and felt that. From there I got interested in what to do with the plants, and some would tell me. Then I spent a lot of time being a hobbyist and continued down that path until herbalism was the only thing I wanted to do.”